Romney was stoic as he talked the president, an aide said, but his wife Ann cried. Running mate Paul Ryan seemed genuinely shocked, the adviser said. Ryan’s wife Janna also was shaken and cried softly.

“There’s nothing worse than when you think you’re going to win, and you don’t,” said another adviser. “It was like a sucker punch.”

Their emotion was visible on their faces when they walked on stage after Romney finished his remarks, which Romney had hastily composed, knowing he had to say something.

Both wives looked stricken, and Ryan himself seemed grim. They all were thrust on that stage without understanding what had just happened.

“He was shellshocked,” one adviser said of Romney.

[…]

[T]hey believed the public/media polls were skewed – they thought those polls oversampled Democrats and didn’t reflect Republican enthusiasm. They based their own internal polls on turnout levels more favorable to Romney.

[…]

The huge and enthusiastic crowds in swing state after swing state in recent weeks – not only for Romney but also for Paul Ryan – bolstered what they believed intellectually: that Obama would not get the kind of turnout he had in 2008.

1. They got big crowds, therefore,
2. people won’t turn out for Obama.
3. If people don’t turn out for Obama,
4. then the public polls are skewed.
5. If public polls are skewed,
6. then Romney is winning.

Of course, the size of Romney’s crowds had absolutely no bearing on whatever turnout Obama would get. But apparently, that idiotic and fact-free assumption is what made them so confident.

At 6:30AM on Tuesday, I went to the polls. I was immediately turned away because I didn’t have my poll watcher certificate. Many, many people had this problem. The impression I got was this was taken care of because they had “registered me”. Others were as well. But apparently, I was supposed to go on my own to a Victory Center to pick it up, but that was never communicated properly. Outside of the technical problems, this was the single biggest failure of the operation. They simply didn’t inform people that this was a requirement. In fact, check out my “checklist” from my ORCA packet:

Notice anything missing? My guess is the second “Chair (if allowed)” was supposed to be “poll watcher certificate” but they put chair twice. This was an instruction packet that went out to 30,000+ people. Did no one proof-read it?

So, to recap, not only did the Romney team manage to box itself into a comfortably numb bubble of ignorance, it also managed to massively cock up the Election Day efforts of 30,000 pro-Romney operatives on the ground across the nation.

There was, to my mind, only one qualitative argument generally made in favor of Romney: that his management experience made him uniquely qualified to be president. He was a “turn-around artist.” A “genius CEO.” Now even the claim that his private-sector ability to master organizations and rescue them was a variation on process. And it always struck me as a little dubious. For one thing, it’s not immediately clear how the skill set of the private-sector executive transfers to the job of managing the executive branch of the U.S. government. CEOs say jump and everyone around them says how high. The president says jump and half of Congress tries to countermand the order while getting him fired and the other branch of government gets to decide whether jumping is even theoretically allowed.

But at least this was a falsifiable claim. And the fact that Romney could not master even his own campaign organization in order to win an incredibly winnable election demonstrates–incontrovertiably–that it wasn’t true. If he was a turn-around artist, he would be president-elect right now.

Most political campaigns aren’t invalidated by a loss. A candidate puts forward an idea or a worldview and it can stand whether or not it’s embraced by voters. It has its own truth. But in the wake of his loss Romney’s campaign now looks ludicrous.

(Originally posted by openDemocracy, republished under a Creative Commons license)

What a difference two years make.After the congressional elections in November 2010, the Tea Party was the talk of the town. Both left-wing and right-wing media pundits declared “the” Tea Party to be the (only) winner, and all focus was on the right’s new stars such as Rand Paul in Kentucky and Marco Rubio in Florida. The new Republican Party kingmakers were Jim De Mint and Sarah Palin, support from whom was claimed to be essential for their fellow Republicans to get elected. It became obligatory to refer to the new legislature as “the Tea Party Congress”. The fact that only one-third of Tea Party-backed candidates had actually been elected was irrelevant. The Tea Party was the new story, and all experts knew that it was here to stay.

An aptly titled Fox News story – “After election victories, Tea Party activists look ahead to 2012″ – speculated about the movement’s future. It seemed beyond debate that it was the newly dominant force in United States politics; the question was whether it was going to take over the Republican Party or create a third party. Within a month of the November 2010 elections the answer to that question became clear: helped by massive spending by “astroturf” organisations such as FreedomWorks, and led by members of the Grand Old Party establishment, the Tea Party was steadily integrated into the GOP. But who controlled who? Read More

The road ahead, for liberals, is long and hard. Our social safety net and investment in ordinary working people who actually run this country is in tatters, decimated by years of Republican efforts and Democrats letting (or even making) it happen, incorrectly believing that’s what the country wants. The Affordable Care Act was saved last night, and it’s got a lot of good stuff in it, but it needs to be built upon. (But if we didn’t pass it, we couldn’t build on it, something that a lot of people who attack Obama from the left fail to understand.) We need to continue to push for a public option and lowering of the Medicare age to 55. We need to push for more government spending to get this economy healthy again. We need serious legislation to address climate change, and we need to start investing in infrastructure to protect ourselves against future disasters like Hurricane Sandy. We need to get serious about liberalizing our immigration laws. We need to help expand access to abortion and contraception. There’s a lot that needs to be done.

But last night proved—and I hope Democrats are paying attention—that this is what the country wants. We’re not a bunch of conservatives who only vote for Democrats by accident. This is a liberal nation. It’s only going to become more liberal. Democrats can move to the left and they will be rewarded at the polls. After all, conservatives have been calling Obama a “socialist” for four years now, and the public basically responded by saying, “Sounds good to me!” We’re liberals. Time to start governing like it.

There are two different systems that are at work in American politics. The first is the electoral system. It was on display last night, as Barack Obama won re-election, and the Democrats held onto the Senate and the Republicans the House. The second is the pressure system–a term used by the great political scientist E. E. Schattschneider to describe the competition between lobbies and political organizations to influence not just who wins elections, but what politicians do in office.

[…]

While retaining some of the New Deal white working class in the North and far West, the Democrats have built a largely post-industrial coalition of blacks, Latinos, Asians, working women, professionals, and youth. Its outlook is socially liberal, egalitarian, and supportive of positive (as opposed to “big”) government. The Republicans are increasingly the party of the white evangelicals, white Southerners, nouveaux riches suburbanites, and narrow business interests opposed to government taxes and regulation. The Democratic coalition is growing; the Republican shrinking. Republicans can still win national elections, but only when a Democrat stumbles badly.

The pressure system, however, looks very different. Think back to the pressure system at the end of Franklin Roosevelt’s first term. There was enormous ferment on the left–from a growing industrial labor movement to Huey Long’s populism. Republicans were shell-shocked, and business was divided and discredited. In 2012, Obama and Democrats can command the loyalty of single interest groups on the environment, gay marriage and gun control. There are also some internet-based campaign groups. But the only group that can provide money and volunteers and that can battle for a comprehensive agenda between elections is the labor movement. And it is on the decline and on the defensive.

By contrast, the Republican pressure system has, if anything, grown more powerful over the last two decades. It includes major business organizations, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and National Federation of Independent Business, political organizations like the Americans for Tax Reform, the Club for Growth, Freedomworks, and Americans for Prosperity, and a loose network of activist groups identified with the Tea Party or the religious right. Their power to raise money and wield influence has been enhanced by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision.

[…]

In states and congressional districts where a Republican is expected to win, they have backed the most conservative candidates. But they have also punished Republicans like Lugar by backing primary challengers. That tactic cost the Republicans a chance to win back the Senate in 2010, and it cost them the Indiana seat this year, but it also has put the fear of retribution in elected Republicans who contemplate compromising with Democrats. It has increased the likelihood of gridlock in Washington.

IOW, don’t hold yr breath in anticipation of a thundering herd of Democratic ponycorns looming on the legislative horizon (alas). Kevin Drum nails it: “It’s going to be four years of faux drama and trench warfare, and that just doesn’t seem very appealing.”

By sunrise the next day, it was clear to Romney that they had acted too quickly. The campaign learned that four Americans had been killed in an attack on a U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. Even to some Republicans, Romney’s hasty statement looked insensitive.

“We screwed up, guys,” Romney told aides on a conference call that morning, according to multiple people on the call. “This is not good.”

His advisers told him that, if he took back his statement, the neoconservative wing of the party would “take his head off.”He stood by it during an appearance in Florida. Two days later, Obama traveled to Joint Base Andrews to meet the four flag-draped coffins.

(Originally posted by openDemocracy, republished under a Creative Commons license)

We’re only a few days away from knowing who will lead the US for the next four years. (Probably – I haven’t forgotten 2000).

The contest is already a media success. It has had some interesting twists and turns, and as it approaches the finish it’s close and exciting.

For pundits, it’s prediction time, and we’re treated to their expert opinions (also known as gut feelings) on who will be occupying The White House.

But this year we’ve seen more of a less cocksure bunch, wielding large sets of interesting numbers but still refusing to go all in. While traditional pundits still pretend that any cherrypicked poll swing is “news”, proper statisticians are adding them all together, carefully weighed by many parameters, thus creating a much more reliable meta-analysis. Read More

What you are going to see over the next week is an overt effort by Democrats to politicize the issue of disaster response. They’re right to do it. Conservatives are already complaining about this, but the attempt to wall disaster response off from politics in the aftermath of a disaster is an attempt to insulate Republicans from the consequences of their policies.

Funding for FEMA is something the parties wrangle over, with Republicans pushing to limit the agency’s budget, and Democrats pushing back. FEMA has to fight for its share of a constricted pot of money for domestic non-entitlement spending, a pot of money that the Republicans propose to radically constrict. How radically? Romney’s budget promises require shrinking domestic non-entitlement spending as a share of the economy by about two-thirds.

The Republican proposal to eviscerate this wide array of public functions is one of the underdiscussed questions of the election. Republicans have defended it using a very clever trick. They don’t explain how they would allocate the massive cuts to all these programs. When President Obama explains what would happen if those cuts were allocated in an across-the-board fashion, Republicans scream bloody murder. And when any single one of those programs enters the political debate, they can deny plans to make any specific cuts: They won’t cut education, they won’t cut support for veterans, and so on.

[…]

The GOP is the party arguing for splurging on a long vacation at the beach rather than repairing the roof. Naturally, they want to have this argument only when it’s sunny and never when it’s raining. There’s no reason to accommodate them.

As Scott Lemieux (h/t) rightly notes, “Policies have consequences… . It’s “political” to point this out, but not in any negative sense.” Sandy has highlighted (and further widened) the measurable gap between the respective policy platforms of the Obama & Romney campaigns relating to critical federal infrastructure and crisis management resources. And no amount of frantic Etch-a-Sketching (nor simian-esque shit-flinging from the sub-literate wingnut fringe) will damn that hemorrhagic fissure.

The story of the money behind this year’s political conventions hews very closely to the funding narrative of the entire election cycle — the Republicans had a huge advantage, led by generous donations from individuals, and the Democrats turned to a coalition of traditional supporters and a very large regional company.

Both parties looked to regional backers to foot large parts of the bill for the respective conventions. A number of well-heeled Tampa-area individuals and companies picked up much of the tab for the Republican Convention in August, while Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank Of America was the single largest financial supporter behind the Democratic Convention in that city in early September.

In total, the 2012 Tampa Bay Host Committee raised $55.8 million and spent about $52.4 million, while the Committee for Charlotte 2012 raised a much more modest $35 million and spent $33.4 million. Contributions from Bank of America to the Democratic event came to $10.9 million, nearly one-third of the total. Bank of America also donated $1.1 million to the Republican event. Read More

There is no other policy arena in which the president of the United States has greater latitude than foreign affairs. With U.S. foreign policy less constrained by Congress and relatively free from the media scrutiny that attends the president’s more domestic endeavors, foreign affairs largely remains the domain of the commander in chief. Indeed, broadcast regularly into living rooms all across the globe, the U.S. president is often the singular face of the United States of America in the world—especially in lands where few Americans tread.

Yet global issues routinely get short thrift in presidential debates, especially in yet another election year characterized by economic malaise and divisive social issues. And with media coverage focused primarily on the performance of the candidates and the debates’ impact on the national horserace, crucial questions about how the United States behaves on the world stage routinely fall between the cracks. This neglect is exacerbated by the fact that, when it comes to foreign policy, there is a tremendous amount of overlap between the major candidates.

In the interest of keeping vital global issues in the discussion, Foreign Policy in Focus reached out to scholars at the Institute for Policy Studies—our institutional home—to sketch out progressive perspectives on the world issues we don’t expect to get fair treatment in the debates. Without an informed citizenry, these crucial topics will always fall by the wayside. So read up, and share widely! Read More

Last week, after it appeared that the warmongering from Israel had died down, an article appeared in Foreign Policy by David Rothkopf, its editor. It was widely tweeted, and some reporters I respect seemed to be taking it seriously. I found that hard to do after this statement, about halfway through the article:

Indeed, according to a source close to the discussions, the action that participants currently see as most likely is a joint U.S.-Israeli surgical strike targeting Iranian enrichment facilities.

I would have thought that, after the discussions by military experts saying that no way could anything that would have any effect on Iran be called a “surgical strike,” someone like Rothkopf would have had better sense than to use that phrase, and the rest of the commentariat would have had better sense than to take him seriously. Read More

(The Artist Formerly Known As) Johnny Rotten talks with Current’s John Fugelsang about the VP debate, Obama’s constant struggle between sound policy and bloodless bureaucratic airs, and why he believes that it’s so crucial to keep Romney out of the White House.

[W]hile Republicans have every right to seize on the administration’s dissembling, it’s very hard for me to find a foreign policy criticism here, outside of banal ones (i.e. that U.S. facilities overseas need better security and that public officials shouldn’t lie). Many Republicans - and conservative commentators – supported the intervention in Libya. Moreover, if the GOP platform and Mitt Romney’s foreign policy statements are to be believed, Republicans believe Washington needs to be engaged in more direct attacks and subversion of countries in the Mideast.

In other words, if you think the aftermath of the Libyan intervention has been bad for U.S. interests, the Republican answer is to replicate it in more countries.